Established to provide publication opportunities for scholars researching and writing on Central and East European themes.

Helena History Press is distributed world-wide by
Central European University Press: Budapest and New York.

Publications

Third Europe. Polish Federalist Thought in the United States – 1940–1970s

Sławomir Łukasiewicz

The genesis of the federalist thought that the book discusses is related to the collapse of the international order in East Central Europe in the years 1938-1939, which also marked a breakthrough in political concepts. One of the projects widely discussed beginning in the fall of 1939 was the idea of combining Poland’s and Czechoslovakia’s war efforts, which soon developed into federalist concepts, leading, in turn, to particular political gestures: the Polish-Czechoslovak Declaration of November 11, 1940; a joint project of a constitution of a future Polish-Czechoslovak Federation; and, finally, the Declaration from January 1942.

Publications

Comrade Baron

Jaap Scholten

Under the terror of Gheorghiu-Dej and later Ceau&scedil;escu the aristocracy led a double life: during the day they worked in quarries, steelworks and carpenters’ yards; in the evening they secretly gathered and maintained the rituals of an older world.

Publications

The War of the Princes: The Bohemian Lands and the Holy Roman Empire 1546-1555

Publications

White and Red Umbrella. The Polish American Congress in the Cold War Era (1944-1988)

Joanna Wojdon

The Polish American Congress was founded in 1944 to counter the Soviet plans to subjugate Poland, and promote the Polish American ethnic group in the United States. This volume presents goals and everyday activities of the Polish American Congress from 1944 to 1988.Read full description >

Publications

Stigmatized: A History of Hungary’s Internal Deportations during the Communist Dictatorship
( Megbélyegzettek: A kitlelepítések tragédiája)

21st Century Hungarian Language Survival in Transylvania

Publications

Night and Fog: The Collected Dramas and Screenplays of Danilo Kiš

Translated and with an introduction by John K. Cox

This volume of translations represents the entire dramatic and cinematic ouevre of the Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš (1935-1989). The seven dramas and screenplays are accompanied by a historical introduction by the translator, John K. Cox, who has also translated two of Kiš’s novels (The Attic and Psalm 44) and a volume of his short stories (The Lute and the Scars).

Publications

In Search of the Budapest Secession: The Artist Proletariat and Modernism’s Rise in the Hungarian Art Market, 1800–1914

Jeffrey Taylor

Taylor provides us with a fascinating history beginning in eighteen-hundred of the art market of Hungary, of the rise of modernism and its conflict with traditional elements. This book is a valuable addition to the history of European art of the 19th century and one which gives us an insight into the commercial aspects of the art marketplace which have not been explored by previous scholars.

Publications

German War — Russian Peace: The Hungarian Tragedy, The wartime memoir of Hungarian Minister Antal Ullein-Reviczky

Translated from the original French by Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky
Introduction by Tibor Frank

The book contains the wartime memoirs of Antal Ullein-Reviczky, first published in French in 1947 in Switzerland as Guerre allemande, paix russe. Le drame hongrois. This is the first English edition, translated from the French original by Lovice Mária Ullein-Reviczky. His memoir is an invaluable source about Hungary’s fate in World War II. Ullein-Reviczky’s work was based partly on the public and private documents he succeeded in saving throughout the war and his long years of exile in Turkey, Switzerland, France, and Britain where he died. Written by a well-informed insider and a shrewd observer, this book remained essentially unknown in the English-speaking world.

Publications

The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare:
Cold War Organizations Sponsored by
the National Committee for a Free Europe

Each of the essays in this volume focuses on an organization or activity funded through the National Committee for a Free Europe, Inc. (NCFE was known as the Free Europe Committee, Inc. after 5 March 1954) during the war of ideas and ideals in which the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged that came to be known as the Cold War.
Read full description >

Upcoming Releases

July 1944: Deportation of the Jews of Budapest Foiled

Géza Jeszenszky

The Fateful Years 1938-1945

Vilmos Nagy de Nagzbaczon
with an introduction by MEP George Schöpflin

Upcoming Releases

The Assembly of Captive European Nations in American Cold War Politics

Photos from Jaap Scholten’s book tour UK and USA 2016

May 4: Book launch at the Hungarian Cultural Center in Covent Garden. Moderator for the evening BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Petroc Trelawny.

May 24: Jaap Scholten book reading at the University of California at Berkeley. Hosted by the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES) at the university. This was an evening talk open to the university community. Jeffrey Pennington, Executive Director of the Institute was the host.

May 25: Jaap Scholten at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California. He spoke to journalism, communications and history students at the college. The event was sponsored by Lynne Thew the professor of journalism at the college.

May 25: Jaap Scholten at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California.

May 26: Book Reading and dinner at the Metropolitan Club of San Francisco. Katalin Kádár Lynn was the sponsor for the event.

June 2: Book reading at Stanford University: Hosted by CREEES the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Jovana Knezevic, Assistant Director of CREEES hosted. This was an evening talk.

The New Criterion Review of Comrade Baron

"Elegy for elegance" by David Pryce-Jones

Vol. 35, No. 6 / February 2017

A review of Comrade Baron: A Journey through the Vanishing World of the Transylvanian Aristocracy by Jaap Scholten

Comrade Baron is a highly personalized defense of aristocracy. These days, that’s the sort of thing that simply isn’t done and this singular book therefore runs the risk of being overlooked, perhaps even finding a place on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum that keeps progressives occupied. That would be a shame. Comrade Baron is thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.

Spear's Review of Comrade Baron

December 27, 2016

Book Reviews: Comrade Baron by Mark Le Fanu

As aristocracies go, the Transylvanian variety of the species must be one of the most exotic. One might even be tempted to wonder whether the institution exists, outside of fiction. But here we are with a new book on the subject, whose subtitle tells us, not that it has definitively ‘vanished’, but that it is vanishing, in the present tense. By definition, therefore, still with us — at least for the time being.

Foreword Review's Review of Comrade Baron

August 26, 2016

by Bradley A. Scott

Jaap Scholten has done an extraordinary job of recording and presenting the stories of a persecution almost forgotten.

In Comrade Baron, Jaap Scholten explores a harrowing history little known in the English-speaking world. With a mixture of personal observation, sympathetic interviews, and astute historical analysis, he exposes the Romanian government’s cruel campaign against the aristocratic families of Transylvania between 1949 and 1989, when Nicolae Ceaușescu’s brutal dictatorship finally collapsed. “I want to write down the stories of a disappearing world,” he explains to a skeptical sister-in-law in the introduction. Those stories form a gripping and tragic tale.

Comrade Baron

Jaap Scholten

In the darkness of the early morning of 3 March 1949, practically all of the Transylvanian aristocracy were arrested in their beds and loaded into lorries. That same day the Romanian Workers’ Party was pleased to announce the successful deportation and dispossession of all large landowners. Communism demanded the destruction of these ultimate class enemies. Under the terror of Gheorghiu-Dej and later Ceaușescu the aristocracy led a double life: during the day they worked in quarries, steelworks and carpenters’ yards; in the evening they secretly gathered and maintained the rituals of an older world.

To record this unknown episode of recent history, Jaap Scholten travelled extensively in Romania and Hungary and sought out the few remaining aristocrats who experienced the night of 3 March 1949. He spoke to people who survived the Romanian Gulag and met the youngest generation of the once distinguished aristocracy to talk about the restitution of assets and about the future. How is it possible to rebuild anything in a country that finds itself in a moral vacuum?

“An extraordinary, passionate
and important work”

“This is a classic in the lines of Patrick Leigh Fermor”
Norman Stone, professor of modern history, Oxford

“Combining a warm heart with the tenacious pursuit of truth, Jaap Scholten restores to vivid life the world of the Transylvanian aristocracy from its glory days to its tragic finale. Scholten thereby captures a missing piece of history and provides the reader with a gripping journey through a lost world.”
Kati Marton, author and award winning former ABC News correspondent.

“I have enjoyed this book so much - such a great tale, with brilliant original research and source material, and so many stories, tragic, humiliating, painful, yet all engrossing and highly readable.”
Petroc Trelawny, BBC Radio 3 presenter and journalist

Jaap Scholten, (Enschede, 1963) studied Industrial Design at the Technical University in Delft, Graphic Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy of Arts in Rotterdam (BA), and Social Anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest (MA). He has published seven books: collections of short stories and three novels. His novel, De wet van Spengler (Atlas Contact, 2008), was chosen “novel of the year” in the Netherlands. His latest book, Kameraad Baron (AtlasContact, 2010) is the winner of the Libris History Prize 2011. His novels and short stories are translated into German, French, Hungarian, Croatian. In 2011 Scholten created and presented a six-part television series for the VPRO about hidden worlds in Central and Eastern Europe. He has lived in Budapest since 2003. The English edition of Comrade Baron will be released by Helena History Press on May 1, 2016 and distributed worldwide through Central European University Press.

Judith Kesserű Némethy introducing the volume she edited titled 21st Century Hungarian Language Survival in Transylvania at the 40th Annual American Hungarian Educators Association conference which for the first time was held in Kolozsvár, (Cluj) Romania. www.ahea.net